Where were you?

mckayleesmom wrote: I just thought everyone could state where they were on september 11th when they found out about the attack. I didn't know where to post on your site Sammysmom..

I was in my bedroom and my brother said something about it on tv, but I didn't believe him because hes not very bright in the first place, so I thought he was misunderstanding something. I came out of my bedroom and sure enough it was on tv. I just couldn't believe it. It was heart wrenching. I just couldn't believe that this was happening here. It was so unreal like a movie.

5littleladies replied: I was at home in bed. DH called me from work and told me to turn on the tv-That planes were hitting buildings and it was suspected to be terrorism. We watched the news for 4 days straight. I don't even remember giving my daughter lunch that first day-even though people who were there with me say I did. I remember how surprised we were when we saw our first commercial in 4 days. It seemed strange to see that the world was going on in spite of everything. It was very surreal.

Maddie&EthansMom replied: I remember getting up early that morning to watch the Today Show. DH and I had just been in NYC 4 months prior to the attacks. Right when I turned on the TV it showed the first tower that had been hit. The anchors didn't even know what was going on. I thought it was a joke. Things kept getting worse...the news kept getting worse. I couldn't peel my eyes off of the TV (I was at home) I watched TV for 2 days and finally decided to get out of the house so I took DD to the park. I cried at everything. Just seeing all the flags everywhere and the people with gloomy looks on their face made me cry. Everyone was so nice to each other and yet we were all so sad. I still can't believe it. It still makes me cry. It is so hard for me to fathom all that went on. Just months before that me and DH were at the World Trade Center admiring the buildings and taking tons of pictures. What a tragedy. It IS so hard to believe 2 years have passed. Seems like yesterday to me.

A&A'smommy replied: I was at home in bed (i was homeschooled) and my mom came and woke me up at first i though she was crazy and then i got up and i only saw that one building had been hit and then i saw the second one i dont know if i actually saw it or they were just replaying it. It felt so scared and weird like that it couldnt have happened here were suppose to be safe because we live in America.

amynicole21 replied: I was at work, and my friend rushed by saying something about someone crashing a plane into the building. My first thought was "what an idiot, they couldn't see the building?" I thought it was just a small prop plane or something. We all wandered into the break room to watch it on TV, and as soon as I walked in the second plane hit. The entire company crowded into that tiny break room and we all watched in silence. 50 people staring at a little tv in silence. I remember realizing with horror that my sister was in Isreal that week for work. I freaked out and started to cry because I associated terrorism with that part of the world and thought that whoever had done this could possibly start more trouble in the Middle East. My sister was stuck in Isreal for a few days, and was escorted by an armed guard everywhere she went for her safety. No one knew what was going on. I cried for about 4 days straight. I think we even slept with the tv on for the first few days.

ediep replied: I was at school teaching a class of 7th graders the metric system. Another teacher came by my room about 10:30am and told me what happened. She pulled me out into the hallway and said 2 planes just hit the world trade center and another hit the pentagon, they think its terrorists....now you can go back to class but don't tell the students. I was, of course, in utter shock. I am sure that the students could tell that something was wrong by the look on my face. One by one, their parents came to get them out of school that day and many stayed home the next few days. I remember crying all the way home that day everytime I saw a flag and a store marquies that said God Bless America

MomofTay&Sam replied: Here is the link. All the Admins and mods have decided to use a theme for tomm, either a flag or something connected to the attack to show our support. BTW I am Queenie(admin) and Vicky is Mia (admin) just so you guys know who is who. Where were you? Thank you for all the support.

cam&calsmom replied: Wow! It seems like it was yesterday.

I was sleeping (7am here in CA) & my husband calls me from work & tells me to turn on the TV. I turn it on & it seemed like a movie. I couldn't believe it was happening. So, I watch a bit of TV feeling sick to my stomach & crying. I called my boss he got to work early & told him that I wasn't coming in & that I was going to stay home. My son woke up at about 9 & asked me what was wrong (I was crying). It's like, how do you explain this horrible thing to someone that's 5 1/2? I made the decision to let him watch a bit. He's a bit mature for his age. He was in 1st grade at the time. His first week of school. I tried to explain it to him the best that I could. Anyway, my boss called me back at around 9:15 & told me that they were sending him home. I worked for the MPAA (Motion Picture Association Of America) & we're not the most "favorite" people in the world & being in the entertainment industry they weren't sure what would happen next. So, for the next couple of months we were on alert. Pretty scary. I ended up not going to work the next day either.

I was ttc at that time & was wondering why. Especially with SO much hate in the world. It was a really scary time for everyone. People were buying water & canned food & gas masks. It was crazy.

SOOO sad

Jenn

MomToJade&Jordan replied: This is what I posted on Sammy's Mom board:

I was in West Virginia with my husband. He was taking leave before we moved to Hawaii where we are stationed now. We had no idea what was going on and in fact were sleeping. My MIL had to come in and wake us up. By the time I turned the TV on both Towers had fallen and all I saw was smoke. I just broke down and cried. I sat in mute fear everytime the phone rang thinking that the Air Force was calling up to tell my Husband that he had to go somewhere. I do believe that one of those planes had to have passed over the house at one time because of where we were in WV. I watched it all unfold on the TV and thought surely it had to be a movie. We boarded an United Airlines 757 two weeks after it happened. I still to this day don't know how I was able to do that. It amazes me that two years have all ready passed since that day. I hope that we will never have to witness anything like that again in our lifetimes or my daughters. God Bless all who died and all who continue to fight so that we can remain safe.

There was a suggestion made on that board to light a candle and burn it for 24 hours in remembrance. I think that is a great idea so when I get up with the baby in the morning I will light a candle.

jcc64 replied: Well, I work in NYC, but luckily, that day, I was working from home. My office is about 20 blocks north of the WTC. When my dh called to tell me to turn on the tv, we watched together as the 2nd plane hit, and realized what initially appeared as an accident was an horrific attack. I spent the day frantically trying to contact co-workers, as well as my brother, who is a physician in a major NYC hospital. The phone lines were completely jammed all day. When the dust settled (literally), we realized that many people we grew up with had perished in the towers (having grown up in a suburb of NYC), as well as my friend's sister, who happened to be sitting next to the hijackers of the 2nd plane to hit the towers. I returned to work 2 days later, and I can only describe it as surreal. The smell, the eery quiet, the very palpable sense of fear, the hundreds of posters of missing relatives, and the big gaping space when I looked downtown to where the towers once were. Slowly, NYC got back on its feet, but to this day, whenever a particularly loud or low plane passes over, or too many sirens at one time go off, you can literally feel everyone around you sort of freeze. It's a crazy time we live in.

Hillbilly Housewife replied: I live in Ottawa, Canada...but it's not THAT far away.....

I was at work. I was wearing a navy blue suit, with silk lining on the lapels of the jacket, and a gold pin. I don't know why I remember what I was wearing...but I do. One of my coworkers always had a dinky little annoying radio on, with classical music. All of a sudden, this guy starts talking on the station - very unusual. So everyone in the office (12 people) crowd around after a minute or 2, and we're all listening to the account of what happened. Then my boss went out somewhere, and came back 20 minutes later with a small dinky tv set. We plugged it in, and watched the news for an hour. Then an announcement came over the speaker system, advising us that everyone was to go home - they were evacuating the buidling, and the whole section of buildings in the area. Especially since we worked literally across the street from the Parliament (equivalent of the White House I guess...) and all the embassies are surrounding, so they didn't want to take the chance that Ottawa was next for an attack - they wanted no-one around the most likely spot to be hit.

That's pretty much all I remember....except at one point, after like 2 weeks of constant coverage, i was beginning to get annoyed, because I neede to see something other than the news, but all the channels were taken over - it really sucks, because the cable tv here is like 80% US channels.... so not much choice. I wanted to watch something funny for a change....and I remember getting so pissed off because there was nothing but new coverage.

DansMom replied: I was extremely ill, lying on the couch in the living room with swollen glands and tonsils, unable to eat and barely able to move. I heard my husband exclaiming loudly from the bedroom where we have a small TV. He likes to get the weather and news in the morning before he gets out of bed. He said that a plane had hit the WTC. Like a lot of people, I thought it was an accident and that it was a small plane. But when the second plane hit, and then the Pentagon, we were filled with dread. We were glued to the television for that whole week. September 12 I had to go to the hospital to see a specialist. Most of the Ear, Nose, Throat specialists were stuck in Colorado where they had gone for a conference. They weren't able to fly back out, and were renting cars to get home, so I met with a resident that day. He wore a bizarre helmet-like mask with an eye-scope attached while he punctured and scraped my tonsils with a sharp instrument, thinking that I had a bacterial infection that needed to be drained (?) (it turned out to be mononucleosis). I will always associate the horror of that week's events with the delirium of the illness, the doctor's terrible mask and the pain of that procedure. The personal and public horrors blurred together.

For months I read the individual stories and profiles of those who died that day and cried for them and the people who lost them. My friend Kathryn lost her childhood friend Daria. Daria was training a new employee that day, a woman who was pregnant with her first child and who also did not survive. Then when I read articles about the babies born to women whose husbands had perished, and there were so many, the scope of the tragedy really hit home.

The fear that was created that day seems superficially like it is starting to fade, but really it is just under the surface, as I discovered during the blackout. A lot of us were still at work when the lights and telephones went out, and when we heard on a battery-operated radio that the entire eastern seaboard had lost power, there was a panic. Some people started crying and a lot of us were trembling and anxious to get home to our families. It was not the reaction you have if the power goes out for technical reasons. The fear that it was terrorism was everyone's first reaction.

coasterqueen replied: I was on my way to work when I heard it on the radio. I thought it was a joke. I parked my car, ran the block to work and my co-worker met me at the door crying. We immediately turned the tv on in the boss' office and could not work. My boss called he was on his way back from Cincinnati Ohio, he couldn't get a flight out and had to try to fight the traffic to rent a car. We ended up closing the office down around noon becuz we told our boss we just could not work, we were too emotional. So I went home and talked with my husband's cousins becuz we had family in New York. They were okay, thankfully.

aspenblue1 replied: I was on my way to get an ultrasound. I rember hearing it on the radio I was completely in shock. Then when I got to the hopsital sitting there in the waiting room watching the TV in shock.

Schnoogly replied: I was asleep, and the clock radio went off around 8 to wake up. Dh was in the shower. The radio was tuned to a talk radio station where the host often does weird jokey things, and I heard him say that the news would be showing the tower falling all day (the first tower had just gone down). I thought it was a joke. I listened, half awake, for a few minutes, and then turned on the TV. I ran in the bathroom and told DH that planes had flown into the twin towers. We both sat on the bed (he naked and wet) and watched the news totally in shock. I was so worried about my dear friend Lorelei who worked in lower Manhattan at a publishing company. Luckily she was able to email everyone later that day that she was OK.

I went to work because I had a meeting to discuss funding for a conference and the provost was absolutely in shock too; he had family in NYC. It was a short meeting for sure.

I was teaching a class on the weekends in Oregon (I flew up there every weekend) and called the director to discuss how we were going to handle it later that day. Like most of America, I spent a lot of time in front of the TV, and we cancelled class that weekend because I couldn't fly up there.

MommyToAshley replied: DH and I both were home (since we work out of our home). My Sis (Ashade75) called me to tell me about it and we turned on the TV just in time to see the second plane hit. I remember the reporter stumbling over his words.... "this isn't an accident, this is an act of terror" We were glued to the television for the next few days... horrified and in disbelief.

alice&arik replied: I had just gotten off of nightshift and was driving in my car, (shopping or something and it came on the radio. I couldn't believe it, wel lat first they said it was a single engine plane and they didn't really know anything, thought someone lost control of a plane. I was in the car when the second one hit. When I got home I saw it on the news.